As the schedule falls into place a month before SCALE 12X, theSouthern California Linux Expo, let's start our semi-weekly look atsome of the events slated for the three-day, first-of-the-yearLinux/FOSS conference in North America:

BEGINNING SYSADMIN TRACK

Something new at SCALE: As part of the Southern California LinuxExpo's ongoing effort to educate everyone in the world about Linux,SCALE 12x proudly presents a Beginning Sysadmin track. If you've beenhanded responsibility for a Linux server at work and are struggling tomaintain it, this track is for you. This track, oriented aroundRPM-based distributions like Red Hat, CentOS, and Scientific Linux,will have a series of sessions which will help you get on and traveldown the sysadmin road. There are two speaker slots left for thistrack, so if you are an experienced Linux sysadmin comfortable withspeaking in public, create a speaker account, submit a proposal, anddrop a note to orv@socallinuxexpo.org.

SCALE: THE NEXT GENERATION â€“ SCALE 12X will once again host SCALE:TNG, a conference by youth for youth where the Free/Open SourceSoftware and hardware community leaders of tomorrow will be able tospotlight their talents and ideas today.

CHEF TRAINING: Leave your knives and cooking utensils at home. Chef isan automation platform that transforms infrastructure into code. Thisis a hands-on tutorial that will cover the basics that everyone needsto know about how to use Chef for system and infrastructuremanagement. We'll discuss the server API, the code primitives, and thetools required to successfully use Chef.

DEVOPS DAY LA: DevOps Day LA is a full day event targeted atdevelopment and operations IT professionals. The 3rd Annual DevOps DayLos Angeles event will be hosted by SCALE 12X, in conjunction with theSoCal DevOps and LA DevOps Meetups. The event will include a full dayof sessions, panels, and lightning talks.

LPI CERTIFICATION EXAM PREP AND EXAMS: Now in its fifth year at SCALE,The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linuxcertification organization, announced promotional exam preparation andexam labs sessions for their Linux Professional InstituteCertification (LPIC) at SCALE 12x.

PUPPET CAMP LA: Both new and experienced Puppet users are welcome toattend Puppet Camp LA at SCALE. Puppet Camp LA is acommunity-oriented, regional gathering of Puppet users and developers.You will have the opportunity to talk to a diverse group of Puppetusers, benefit from presentations delivered by prominent communitymembers, share experiences, and discuss potential implementations ofPuppet with your peers.

UBUCON: UbuCon will return to SCALE 12X. Part unconference, partscheduled sessions, the SCALE 12X UbuCon will cover what is going onwithin the Ubuntu community and how to improve the community. If youuse Ubuntu, are interested in Ubuntu, or want to know more aboutUbuntu then check back to pick which sessions you want to be part of,and participate in the SCALE 12X UbuCon.

LOS ANGELES POSTGRESQL DAY: The Los Angeles PostgreSQL Day willpresent talks designed for a general audience of web developers,sysadmins, DBAs and open source users. Talks will have significanttechnical content revolving around the powerful, open sourceobject-relational database system with more than 15 years of activedevelopment and a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity,and correctness.

WEAKEST GEEK: Come see members of the Free/Open Source Software andhardware community face off against each other, determining who hasthe greatest knowledge of geek culture. Contestant lineup for WeakestGeek: Leslie Hawthorn, Jordan Sissel, Ruth Suehle, Brendan Gregg, andDeb Nicholson. A new twist this year: The SCALE Team will besoliciting questions from the general public this year, asking you tosend in your best geek question. Send questions marked â€œWeakest GeekQuestionâ€ in the subject line to info@socallinuxexpo.org and if yourquestion is chosen, your name will appear on the slide during the, um,contest.